Overpopulation

What is the real threat to homo sapiens: overpopulation or overconsumption? The New York Times looks at the unrealized predictions of Dr. Paul Erlich who warned of a “population bomb” catastrophe in the 1970s…

“I agree with Mother Teresa when she said, ‘to say that there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers,'” Duggar said. She explains how her large family is resourceful and therefore not posing as big of an environmental problem as perceived. They buy used cars, she says, and frequently shop at thrift stores, purchasing things others would discard.

What’s the biggest issue facing humanity as the global population reaches seven billion?

Montreal’s Le Devoir newspaper asked for an answer from correspondents around the world. Here are the replies, including a link to that from the Free Press. Note the recurring theme of fresh water, not a problem here in the Great Lakes region, but a critical issue for millions of people in many regions.

Paleofuture Blog, which look at predictions and visions of the future as previous generations imagined it, has a video feature examining the colorful weirdness of apocalyptic doom-and-gloom in the 1970s. In that decade, frightening documentaries such as Future Shock and The Late Great Planet Earth caught the zeitgeist by foretelling the fast-approaching destruction of humanity at the hands of overpopulation, dehumanizing technology, Communism, ancient prophecies, and natural devastation. Viewing these works today, they are a reminder that the world probably isn’t going to end, and we’ll make it through to tomorrow.

A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an “unrecognizable” world by 2050, researchers warned at a major US science conference Sunday.

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, “with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia,” said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.

To feed all those mouths, “we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000,” said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable” if current trends continue, Clay said.

During a hearing with the House Armed Services Committee last week, Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia attempted to explain his concern for the stability of the island of Guam if 8,000 new marines and other naval personnel were to be stationed there.

“My fear that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize,” said the the Georgia Democrat.

Hmm, after reading the follow-up statement to clarify Congressman Johnson’s testimony, I’m still looking for the evidence of “metaphorical” speaking … not really seeing it. Check out the video and the follow-up statement in this clip from MSNBC’s Way Too Early with Willie Geist:

So what’s the biggest time-bomb for Obama, America, capitalism, the world? No, not global warming. Not poverty. Not even peak oil. What is the absolute biggest, one like the trigger mechanism on a nuclear bomb, one that’ll throw a wrench in global economic growth, ending capitalism, even destroying modern civilization?

The one that — if not solved soon — renders all efforts to solve all the other problems in the world, irrelevant, futile and virtually impossible?

News flash: the “Billionaires Club” knows: Bill Gates called billionaire philanthropists to a super-secret meeting in Manhattan last May. Included: Buffett, Rockefeller, Soros, Bloomberg, Turner, Oprah and others meeting at the “home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize biochemist and president of the private Rockefeller University, in Manhattan,” reports John Harlow in the London TimesOnline. During an afternoon session each was “given 15 minutes to present their favorite cause. Over dinner they discussed how they might settle on an ‘umbrella cause’ that could harness their interests.”

The world’s biggest time-bomb? Overpopulation, say the billionaires.

Well that’s not exactly a new argument. In fact it’s been around for decades and if the predictions made in the ’70s had come true, we’d already be experiencing most of the apocalyptic things that Farrell’s worried about now. There’s actually a couple of new films that expose the argument not only to have been fallacious in decades past, but an extremely dangerous mistake now. Check out the trailer for Demographic Bomb and please post comments as to who you think is right.